Congress created the 12-member commission in 2014 after approving a law overhauling the VA after the wait-time scandal, which also revealed that VA employees were covering up chronic delays with false paperwork and secret waiting lists.

With 28 years in the Army - including service at Fort Bragg and in Vietnam - Willie Harris is familiar with the health care system for veterans.

"I had replacement knee surgery in 2014, and it's been giving me problems ever since then," he said.

Harris said the level of care from a doctor he saw earlier frustrated him, to the point where he requested another specialist.

However, he said seeing them took 18 months.

"I kept going back and forth to him, saying there's a problem with it, and he didn't want to hear it," Harris said. "But I finally said, I don't want you anymore. I need to see somebody else, to tell me what's happening with my leg."

It also calls for creating a strategy for meeting health provider needs, modernizing the VA it systems and transforming the culture of VA health care.

And most important for army veterans like Harris, it calls for streamlining and focusing the measurement of services performed.

"The efficiency of some of the doctors is not good," Harris said. "I don't know, I just have to hope, wait and see how this turns out. I hope they get it, make it better."

Following the release of the report, Durham VA Medical Center released a statement that said in part that they are "proud of the changes we have put in place to increase access to and the quality of care for the nearly 70,000 Veterans we serve."